Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
Unfortunately, we sold our stick in trade negotiations, unlike Australia and Canada.
I didn't realise that our capitulation was that complete.
However:
They hated the idea of being competed against with their own tax money way more than they hated a voluntary local quota.
sticks come in various flavas and all it takes is the will. The will was what Labour had in 2001.
I doubt that will exists in any flavour now though.
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In think the fact that Caddick consulted so widely for the report -- 94 in-person interviews! -- shows that everyone knows there's merit in consulting the community. He makes the point that NZOA needs to develop better connections with "stakeholders".
OTOH, Phase Five, which is widely acknowledged as a messy failure, came out of the "Creating Heat" project, which was a good-faith attempt to get lots of people in the room together.
I do think the rise of social media has changed the game quite a lot. I follow Street Chant and Homebrew on Twitter because they're smart and funny (and occasionally tragic). They've become their own media, to the point where it's really helpful to have someone in your band who can do this stuff well. An artist who has their shit together with Bandcamp is much easier for me to help via the blog than one that doesn't. Facebook, for better or worse, rules everything.
The thing about NZOA funding is that it's funding in pursuit of a result. The metric might differ depending on the sector --- Access Radio accounts for itself differently than a rock band does -- but there's always a strong element of bums on seats. I think new ways of measuring bums are called for.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
I didn’t realise that our capitulation was that complete.
Total. Abject. Etc. We could have ringfenced our cultural obligations like those other countries did, but the National government of the 1990s didn't think it was worth the bother.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Where’s my invitation?
you must be under ‘etc’ Simon.
Well he certainly ain't under 30!
BOOM!
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
He makes the point that NZOA needs to develop better connections with "stakeholders".
Indeed. I think Chris, knowing him as I do, attended to this with gusto, energy and focused determination. He's a person I respect (and like) a lot.
As I said elsewhere, my problem is not that he failed to find the injuries but that the band aids miss them, which is not necessarily his fault. And that's all we seem to get from this - band aids.
The political will is missing now but a bigger review of what we are trying to achieve is perhaps well overdue.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
As I said elsewhere, my problem is not that he failed to find the injuries but that the band aids miss them, which is not necessarily his fault. And that’s all we seem to get from this – band aids.
But by the same token what practical solutions do you think there are in the Mayes paper? It proposes turning broadcast music funding into a folky version of Creative New Zealand -- in which case, you'd be better off taking all the money away from NZOA and giving it to another agency, whereupon the government would cry "duplication!" and abolish something.
But if you believe Caddick, that's the exact opposite of the feedback he got from many or most of the people he consulted with -- the music community, including the authors of the Mayes paper -- they generally wanted broadcast music funding to be seen as industry funding for which they were accountable. How do you square that?
One thing I do like in the Mayes paper is the stuff about archiving. We've started to do that that for TV with NZ On Screen, but funding a music archive would be a stretch for NZOA. NZ On Screen would certainly be prepared to help -- the work Brenda has done with Flying Nun is a good example.
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Come on Russell. That's hardly fair. Chris Caddick got paid a fair whack to do his report and they're not the same thing.
Mayes' paper is more a discussion piece raising points and issues to keep in mind while looking for a solution. I don't read it as saying it has the solutions to all problems but that there are a lot more things to think about than what we usually take into consideration.
It moves the focus away from a feeding frenzy for content funding to a focus on the primary role, broadcasting nz content. Shouldn't that be what it's all about. The whole content funding free-for-all came about from the request to up the quality of said content. That's pretty much up there now, so shouldn't all those resources be directed toward solving the monkey puzzle of changing the broadcasting landscape?Archiving and keeping it current and available is a perfect use of the broadcasting commissions time an resources. It actually specifies it as a goal in the broadcasting act, right under producing content on demand in section 36.
The hit discs could be seen as a contribution toward this goal, but that's not enough considering how much of the musical past is currently unavailable or difficult to get. -
Simon Grigg, in reply to
It proposes turning broadcast music funding into a folky version of Creative New Zealand
Which is where Rob and I differ. I'm not advocating any such, what I see as fairly narrow and rather indefinable, cultural approach.
Indeed, as I said above, I'd rather strip the word from the guiding document and more radically revisit the aims of funding. I do tend to think that the cultural aspects will sort themselves out and have faith that those that make the music are creating that vague thing whether they try or not.
I'm also extremely dismissive of the idea that something is not 'ours' because I don't like it.
What does irk me though is that we seem to be working from a mandate that was constructed in a past era - not only pre-digital, but pre-massed acceptance of the stuff we make by the the broadcasting media, and, to a much lesser degree, by middle NZ.
The last parameter has been achieved (we are still struggling with the first) so we should use that advantage and achievement to go to a yet to be fully defined next level.
The report still seems to be reworking that mandate.
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what I see as fairly narrow and rather indefinable, cultural approach.
But isn't this just you putting what you want to see in funding over a pre-existing funding strategy. Surely what NZ on Air does should be controlled by the reason it was set up and the issues it was set up to address.
There's no arguing that a lot of what nz on air has done that is outside of its set tasks such as funding albums and delving into international promotion, slipping funds into a difficult industry etc, are good for nz but are they the tasks it's supposed to be addressing? By the content of the Broadcasting Act obviously not, and you're right Simon the govt could look at the bigger picture and address other issues, but does that come under NZ on Air's mandate?
Maybe there should be a commission for distributing funds to the music industry (Music industry Commission anyone?), yes, we've got one of those already. You've got to always bring it back to NZ on Air's job, which is to secure broadcasting for NZ culture and identity content. Has that job been achieve yet? Maybe we don't need NZ on Air at all any more?
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Neil Morrison, in reply to
Has that job been achieve yet?
might be now impossible to tell. An NZ music quota on facebook?
Social networking-based distribution is causing havoc with the economics of both music and film. Musicians appear to be going back to being on-stage entertainers with greatly diminished earning power. How many albums has Justin Timberlake done in 10 yrs? Not many as there's not much money in it.
And social media sets up communities not base neecssarily on national identity, so funding national culture becomes a bit trickier.
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Just about everyone else in the world has got the blame to date so I guess it's Mark Zuckerberg's turn: Facebook killed the Radio Star.
Debate closed. Next.
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the mind buggles...
Facebook killed the Radio Star.
I note, also, that News Corp is seemingly
readying to sell off MySpaceData from comScore shows global MySpace unique user numbers falling 26.4% from 110.8 million in September 2009 to 81.5 million by November 2010. In the UK, traffic fell from 5.1 million to 2.3 million unique users over the same period.
...will Rupert and his Saudi chums ever solve the problem of making money online...
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
...will Rupert and his Saudi chums ever solve the problem of making money online...
One can but hope not. However as that Guardian / Assange story that's caused a wave says, many newspapers only survive under the wing of their more profitable siblings - Fox in Murdoch's case.
The Times I imagine serves its purpose for Rupert as both a voice and fetter of the UK elite.
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Just saw this (hat tip to Danjite): Feds (sic) sues LucasFilm for undermining VFX artists.
Apparently the US government is alleging that Lucasfilm and Pixar illegally conspired to limit workers payrates. Still, if they got accused of this here, that nice Mr Key would just amend the Commerce Act, no doubt.
Also, saw Made In Dagenham over the hols. Stirring tale of workers standing up for their rights. Was made in the eponymous town. Somehow, I don't think the producers got wined and dined by Brown or Cameron to get it made in the UK.
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
And it bugs me that he continually implies that Hobbit-style tax breaks come straight off the country’s bottom line. As I understand it, they’re narrowly revenue-positive – ie, compared to the film not being made here – and that doesn’t account for taxes on the personal income and spending of New Zealanders employed, or spin-off benefits in terms of creative infrastructure and tourism.
What about the spin-off negatives? Like fostering the perception that our employment protections laws are for sale, and that we can be held to ransom on little more than a pretence? What about the long-term sustainability of branding the country as a Middle Earth knock-off, a derivative, tacky remake of old England? Quite beside how dispiriting it all is, for a country that no longer than fifteen years ago boasted a tourism interested in Maori and Pakeha culture, it could have fiscal consequences as well when the narrative becomes exposed for the fraud that it is, as it most likely will.
(The Lonely Planet's baffling inclusion of Wellington in the top three amongst worldwide urban destinations for this year included praise of the city's "visible Maori culture". I wonder what the international visitor will make of that once they actually get here. But hey, they might still get treated to a Wellywood sign so that's okay.)
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recordari, in reply to
What about the long-term sustainability of branding the country as a Middle Earth knock-off, a derivative, tacky remake of old England?
Bend and streeeeeeetch, just a little bit, maybe? Culture is only visible if you're looking for it. Middle Earth is everywhere.
<sarc>
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Che Tibby, in reply to
praise of the city’s “visible Maori culture”. I wonder what the international visitor will make of that once they actually get here.
that might be the bit in Te Papa, because Blanket Man has been out of town for ages. otherwise, there is SFA.
but many internationals don't seem to make it much further than the old girl on the waterfront.
and i agree about the rebranding as Middle Earth thing. it makes my cultural cringe ramp up to 11.
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"Middle Earth"?
Fuck o dear, we live in Aotearoa-the-shining-bright-land.
NOT in some film-maker's bad recreation of a land that never existed - not even in Tolkein's memories...And yep, recordari, I took aboard the <sarc>
It just worries me that so frequently media refer to our place as Middle Earth...as though an older cultural landscape has utterly evaporated-
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Steve Parks, in reply to
The Lonely Planet’s baffling inclusion of Wellington in the top three amongst worldwide urban destinations for this year included praise of the city’s “visible Maori culture”.
To be clear, that comment about visible Maori culture was from Wellington’s new mayor Celia Wade-Brown, in response to the Lonely Planet judgment, not a comment from Lonely Planet itself, as far as I can see. (Also, they placed Wellington at four, not in the top three.)
But I agree that even ranking Wellington in the top 10 destination cities is pretty specious. I guess that in making their 2011 list Lonely Planet were trying a bit hard to be different and include the unexpected.
The possibility that a “Wellywood’ sign might still be put up by Wellington Airport is a worry. What’s wrong with those fuckers? And to be fair, it was the capital’s former mayor, Kerry Prendergast, who thought the sign would capture the essence of the capital.
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
To be clear, that comment about visible Maori culture was from Wellington’s new mayor Celia Wade-Brown, in response to the Lonely Planet judgment, not a comment from Lonely Planet itself
Thank you, that's a relief... I think.
It just worries me that so frequently media refer to our place as Middle Earth...as though an older cultural landscape has utterly evaporated
The Onion's atlas captured this quite well in its making the New Zealand entry all about its being a film location. This included the following caption:
The beautiful landscape of New Zealand, digitally enhanced by the removal of the aboriginal Maori.
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Two things: firstly radio operates on licensed airwaves that we own (but yes, they have paid for the right to use that bandwidth).
Secondly, I don’t think anyone is suggesting such but in the early days of NZoA radio did slowly start playing things that were pushing their range. Chains for example or Hip Hop Holiday both sounded like songs from another planet when added to commercial radio in NZ, both building via Mai and B-Net. Supergroove are another. The last two were also extraordinarily successful beyond our shores for the same reason. Even now, when I hear Can’t Get Enough in Asia, where it gets gold airplay, it stands out. And that’s why it worked.
First, I'm not disagreeing that we have the right to influence the use of the airways. I thought the voluntary quota that was adopted was a pretty good step at the time.
Going from "you should play a certain amount of nz music" to something further - whether it be "here's what you need to play" or "here are some people to help you decide what you need to play" gives me the heebee geebies however. It's a commercial model so they need to be able to make right and wrong commercial choices for it to work. There's a lot of kudos to Mai FM for spotting the ones that other stations missed, it's important to still allow that so that they can stand out for making good decisions.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
The beautiful landscape of New Zealand, digitally enhanced by the removal of the aboriginal Maori.
Jesus fuck, is Armond "District 9 proves Peter Jackson is a racist" White moonlighting for The Onion?
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
Jesus fuck, is Armond "District 9 proves Peter Jackson is a racist" White moonlighting for The Onion?
I think one could probably build a pretty good case based on Return of the King alone, but congratulations on missing this particular point. You owe me a fluffy bear.
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recordari, in reply to
I think one could probably build a pretty good case based on Return of the King alone, but congratulations on missing this particular point.
So Tolkien, right, not Peter Jackson, or the New Zealand Film industry?
Seems a lot of conflating going on here. Or is that just me?
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The "men of the west" part of Aragorn's speech in the Return of the King was not in Tolkien, as I understand it, and the Arab pirates were... something else, really. It was either grotesquely tone deaf to history, or blithely casual with its racial politics. Or both.
The point of the digitally removed Maori is not that evil Peter Jackson does it, is that it's how we are happy to be branding ourselves for the sake of the tourist dollar, to the point of subsidising a whole industry. Because it's good for us. And hey, it might be, in the short term, I'm sure the moteliers and the guy who sells trips to Hobbiton aren't complaining. But I think people are going to tire of it in a big way - simply because it isn't real.
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